Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 746 The Crypto Hedge Fund Playbook for RWAs, DeFi & 24/7 Markets

Transcript

Ep. 746 The Crypto Hedge Fund Playbook for RWAs, DeFi & 24/7 Markets · CRYPTO 101

0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, everybody.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We are back at the out east summit.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a great guest, a true market operator and a legend in the space that I do say.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So Shaleng Tang, who is the founder and managing partner of Monarch asset management.
0:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Shaleng, thank you so much for joining us.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So happy to be here.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You bet.
0:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about the summit so far?
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing as always, great of an.
0:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I wasn't here as much yesterday.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I heard it rain and poor, but today it's just a beautiful day.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we're out with the Josh.
0:34
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think of the quality of folks that are here relative to over the past several years of crypto conferences?
0:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like it's cut from a different cloth?
0:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would say a lot of familiar faces been in space for a long time, but I would say every single year and, you know, now versus previous year is a lot more institutional, right?
0:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, institutional, the traditional bucket sets not like institutional and the crypto native sets.
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, awesome.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's dive into monarch, you know, multi strategy asset manager, you've been building in a space options, derivatives, spot, tell us about monarch.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you guys working on?
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course, Monarch is basically a continuation of my first fund, which was Ledger Prime, which I ran from 2017 to 2022.
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Same approach, multi-strategy, the belief is that not anyone vertical with strategy, sub-strategy will perform an all-marking environments.
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So with the first fire portfolio strategies into, as you said, derivatives, market-making, arbitrage, funny bases, d-fi, so the collection of
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Traditionally, institutional peace, family offices, private banks, fun of funds, and then lastly, we are part of Falcon X.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So Falcon X is a majority of the fund, and yeah.
1:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, awesome.
1:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, we're recording this.
1:56
[SPEAKER_00]: in the pits of a bear market, what's the biggest sleeve that you guys are running right now?
2:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it long-shore market-making and maybe if you can, as much as you can, give us a breakdown of what that allocation looks like?
2:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.
2:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say right now the opportunity set sits in, I would say, across between DeFi and RWA's, right?
2:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So, interesting.
2:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Historical, it would be much more...
2:19
[SPEAKER_01]: crypto native, right, just trading all coins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, that complex in a bear market, as you know, retails gone, right?
2:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Capital is influenced much there, not even a special speculative demand.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: However, as you've seen AI stocks, memory stocks, like hyper scalers, a ton of demand, and retail attention there.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you have this convergence of these different assets coming on chain through traducts as we eat, but also all the crypto native exchanges and platforms.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's actually been a big driver of where open interest, volume, and attention has been.
2:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for us, that's Cryptinator firms, you know, obviously, we're not going to be able to compete with the $30 million in the land name of the world, and that's the ACME traditional platforms and exchanges.
3:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But once those assets come to the crypto world, that enters the, I would say, the fragmentation of what crypto rails create, and that creates a lot of opportunity for us, right?
3:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've been focusing a lot more on that,
3:19
[SPEAKER_01]: long spot on Aztecs, short purps on TritXYZ and clicked in the funding, right?
3:25
[SPEAKER_01]: As an opportunity, we're just playing the dislocations.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: On weekends, you know, one, these asses are trained 24-7 on crypto rails and not trading on the CME on Aztecs.
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's some dislocations there.
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: especially with the Iran war or these strikes, you know, getting announced at, you know, 5 p.m. after market closes, it's kind of an interesting dynamic and hyper-liquid is kind of the backbone of trade.xyz as well as I understand.
3:49
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you kind of view is the trajectory of these RWAs coming on chain, you know, earlier this year we were around maybe,
3:56
[SPEAKER_00]: $20 billion of assets on chain sitting maybe around 30 billion outside of stablecoins, of course.
4:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But what kind of assets are coming on chain?
4:05
[SPEAKER_00]: What are going to be first to be the quick movers?
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
4:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And kind of what's that pace that people can expect?
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think initially it was just pure derivatives and derivatives forms of these assets, right?
4:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a quickest, you list them, is there an oracle, you know, there could be dislocations, but you don't have to worry about, you know, are these fungible versus the real assets on the other hand.
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Over time,
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: There will be more regulation and proper regulation and these assets will actually be funded by.
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So the actual pure tokenized version where you can actually exchange, admit, redeem basically for the actual stock.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:38
[SPEAKER_01]: On the traffic side, that is growing faster and faster.
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's also where the opportunity says, so it's coming from both ends of the barbell, right?
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Initially, it's just pure derivatives, synthetic exposure.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, sometimes the ton of dislocations, not true representation of it out when they're like acid, but retail doesn't really care in the short term anyway, right?
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the institutions, obviously, they need the real world tokenized version of these assets.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's coming slower, but it's happening quicker and quicker with secure ties and others.
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll probably, you know, converge at some point.
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the scale is, you know, massive, right?
5:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully it's the best of both worlds where you have
5:13
[SPEAKER_01]: real assets right and I just you know pure meme coin and sex speculation like real assets but on you know blockchain reals right and and you know the the kind of the best of both growth assets yeah i've seen i think there's about a hundred trillion dollars of stocks that trade every day or hundred trillion dollars of market cap
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and we've seen folks like the, you know, intercontinental exchange and NASDAQ and I, or an IZV are essentially investing in blockchain infrastructure is the play there to have two parallel systems like their standard thing on the behalf that everybody knows and loves and then, you know, a parallel system that's blockchain and you can go back and forth or is the grand idea to completely reinvent what is existing on blockchain rails.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I think what you said the latter piece, that's probably much longer term horizon right, perhaps, but I think shorter term, there will be two parallel worlds.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it's going to take a, I mean, just like a how long it took institutions to adopt crypto as a, as a whole, and yeah, it's still being adopted, right?
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the idea that people migrate complete to a new set of settlement rails is far-fetched.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it is encouraging that there is kind of this open playground where institutions like the ice and others, and I see are experimenting.
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: it's going to be in a parallel world though.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like it's almost like the revolution from open-out cry pits to electronic trading.
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, open-out cry still exists.
6:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he still exists, right?
6:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it does a different amount of volume than it used to.
6:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And then even the ETF kind of replacing the mutual fund, like mutual fund still exists.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: They just have outflows every year's going towards ETFs.
6:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so I could see a world exists, just like you described where you have the traditional stuff, but, you know, fast money, um, you know, sharps, you know, they're, they're opting for the better, more efficient system, where you could trade 24-7, and it almost might even be a portfolio manager or, or the CEO of this big firm, you know, their mandate.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you guys aren't getting weekends off anymore.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, your systems could trade 24-7, we're managing risk for our clients 24-7, not after
7:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, which is a huge draw, you know, to a guy like me, I'm thinking like, you know, always, and I, I'm going to ask you this question, but, you know, thinking about the benefits of digital assets, right?
7:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so in your view, when you talk to your investors, um, or just hear from others, what do you view besides, again, because the, the low hanging fruit is instant settlement, right?
7:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, 24, 7, 365 trading, but what's like, there are other draws of a real world asset tokenization.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think a big part that maybe is in the sexy part of all this blockchain tokenization, but we're even if you're looking at traditional markets what underpins traditional financial markets is like the repo market, right?
8:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The repo market.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us what that is.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's basically like short term, sometimes overnight, intraday, or just turn a very short term financing, right?
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, there's a lot of,
8:21
[SPEAKER_01]: assets in the traditional world that gets rehabilitated or collateralized as collateral.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, those different forms need to get moved across different PVs for settlements, trading, et cetera.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's PV.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Primeroca.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Primeroca.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
8:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that process.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a repo market that just a
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: looks at a set of portfolio collateral and assets and determines, you know, is this credit where there's not quite a where the can we provide short-term cash financing for settlement so that, you know, because settlement takes like one day, two days, something to longer for other assets.
9:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really the repo markets are the underlying like I would say grease or oil that streamlines a lot of the financial markets right like in 2008 you had the repo markets were frozen right so it wasn't nobody was trust in each other and like sometimes it
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of, there's like two things.
9:17
[SPEAKER_01]: There's their solvency, like is your collateral?
9:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you actually bankrupt or is it like a liquidity issue?
9:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and a lot of times financial catastrophes are less about solvency more about liquidity issues, right?
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And often,
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: when you kill on the hood, like a lot of it's driven by the repo markets, right?
9:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that's a big area that crypto markets blockchain in general can really help streamline itself because you have this idea of like instant settlement.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: collateral is transparent.
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You can settle things a lot faster.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, as more and more assets come on chain, that will only make the general repo market a lot more streamlined.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That's opposed to what it is currently.
10:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you kind of foresee that being like, you know, people talk about AI increasing the GDP, increasing the productivity, you know,
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: do you kind of in robotics that kind of in a similar way?
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see tokenization on that scale of like, if we tokenize, if we have these markets more efficient, we could actually have a society that's more productive.
10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll say yes and no, right?
10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I think like not everything that can be tokenized needs necessarily to like get tokenized, right?
10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like, you know, it's kind of funny like even looking back since like 2016, 2017.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: boom and bust psycho.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: The tokenization has always come back to like the comments like tokenizing in blockchain versus like specus like yeah even 2017 people were talking about oh my god like tokenization like let's tokenize real estate like tokenize art.
10:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So our vineyard but like it hasn't really happened.
10:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I think part of that, you know, maybe part of it's like the technology hasn't come up then, but also like is there actually
11:04
[SPEAKER_01]: like supplying the man for it, right?
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like so I think that's still to be determined, right?
11:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Financial assets, like stocks, commodities, precious metals, fine.
11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But like large parts of other illicit assets, maybe they're actually just isn't much like actual demand for it, right?
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so um...
11:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we're sitting here and talking about like talking about Asian and blockchain, but I think what we're trying to see more and more part of the market fit that we ever have historically.
11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the themes that I've kind of heard from the conversations going on at the summit has been this divergence between increasingly more track of fundamentals, valuations that are obviously down because of prices, but just bear market sentiment in the retail market completely washed out.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You could look at funding rates.
11:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what do you make of just the market environment that we're in right now, kind of, how did we get here?
12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is it that we are and what can kind of kick us out back into a new bull market?
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, it's not too dissimilar from like other cycles again, right?
12:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like his repeat itself, it's human nature, like 2018 was kind of the,
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, hangover from the ICO boom right sure some ways like we saw a ton of like mean Coins in twenty twenty four twenty twenty five get got rug right some people made a lot of money Yeah, most people probably lost a lot of money, right?
12:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, um kind of the pop-and-doms different coins at like all these like tokens that I see all the one I see Oh, but like launch and then it's just
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: constant monthly besting and selling, et cetera, et cetera.
12:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is not an up marginal dollar to support all the different tokens and speculative asses that rush the markets in 2425.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're seeing a lot of little overhang over that, right?
12:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you couple that with the fact that now you have prediction markets and source gambling and AI stocks going on.
12:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's an everything, right?
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like it's the attention economy.
13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
13:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, just so many other things that are happening, right?
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember not come back, right?
13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're hopefully starting to see a little bit of capitalitation back at some point, right?
13:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Memory stocks, like, say we have traded, cooling off a little bit, starting to see the trenches like with Antsome and others, like, pop up a little bit again, right?
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I fundamentally believe they will come back, but it is the attention and economy.
13:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, kind of on on this idea of, you know, the trenches or just tradeable, you know, the tradeable universe of crypto.
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: What indicators do you look at, you know, across the spectrum?
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm not sure if you're a technical analyst guy, or if you like looking at, you know, options, curves and funding rates, but what's kind of like, if, and again, what you do, but also what could a guy at home do, who doesn't have access to, you know, million dollar data sets.
13:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it, you know, when you're trading or investing, I think you, for anyone out there, like, personally, I think you have to set your timeframe a little bit, right?
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, are you trading in your day or are you thinking more about cycles or months, et cetera, right?
14:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, if we don't develop more like cycles and, you know, more longer term of the, then I think you want to look at general flows, especially, let's say, um,
14:24
[SPEAKER_01]: like old wallets, right?
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what are the old walls?
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a lot of them worth distributing and selling coins, middle of 2025, fall of 2025, like long term holders, long Bitcoin wheels, tracking those wallets, or clearly selling Bitcoin.
14:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And now they're actually happy to keep it laying in the past month, right?
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think like that tracking cycle after cycle has been pretty good like indicator, right?
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then you overlay that across maybe
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like open interest, volume, like short-term like technical sure, like you can look at, okay, every, you know, every bear market cycle goes below the tour and they're moving at every or something, etc.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Like just some technicals, maybe it helps you with like entry.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think generally it's flows that drive like price action, right?
15:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe this type is a little bit different because you have ETS and that's a little bit harder to track.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can still track, no black rock, ETF, like inflows outflow is a general trend in a week-to-week basis, right?
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So, no-your-time frame and understand like the flows and then track that.
15:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And would you say like in terms of like data sources, um, you want to give any, um, like glass note is the one that comes first to mind where you could track long-term holders, um, but not many others, data sources are out there, um, that track that's kind of unique data set.
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Which ones do you use?
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the tie is good.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the tie, yeah, sure.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There we go.
15:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there are institutionalities.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, not all retail participants can use the tie, right?
15:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but you know, I think almost all platform to products out there have a retail version, right?
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's just like Arctom or Natsin or others, right?
16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um,
16:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The good thing about crypto and blockchain in general was that was created with the fundamental approach of openness and free like right data is free to Maybe not everybody's ability to scrape that and interpret that data, but it is out there right like whether it's market data from exchanges, whether it's blockchain data It is fundamentally there and hopefully using AI tools now like people have a better ability to access that data set
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'd love to kind of talk about the binary between investing and trading in crypto.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like you're probably both because I was talking to Josh actually from the tie.
16:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He says you're a prolific venture investor as well, but also you're a prolific trader.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in crypto, there's a lot of trading opportunities where you don't care the trajectory of this coin or this asset over the course of 10 years, you just care about the next day or whatever.
16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I think a lot of folks who are watching are more in the investor camp.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, hey, you know, I've got my day job, I'm not going to spend all day and all night trying to out trade a guy like you who has the systems.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what can you tell the average Joe about investing in crypto?
17:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, not saying, oh, buy this coin, buy that coin.
17:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But what kind of coin do you find that you would be willing to put, you know, your money in long term?
17:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What, and what is that value capture method?
17:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: For any one, I think like one advice in general, it's a common piece of advice, but like you know how strong opinions, but like loosely help.
17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, yeah, like crypto has evolved like so much coins that rocketed in 2017-18 or 2021-22, like sometimes so I'm just like completely worthless.
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they might not come back from it.
17:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
17:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So like I think in general, we are probably reaching a flexion point and hopefully clarity passes, maybe maybe not, regardless.
17:57
[SPEAKER_01]: of people realizing that historical governance tokens were mean-coken, et cetera, like some have value, but they're not necessarily long lasting.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and if you do believe this space will become a proper institutional asset class.
18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: and eventually coins are actually going to be probably just similar to like equities in some ways, right?
18:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Like maybe they'll finally be that link between revenue and usage and cash flow back to token demand.
18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, like actual like proper demand, right?
18:33
[SPEAKER_01]: If that link actually exists, then capital flow to those type of tokens, right?
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so looking back in history, exchange tokens, like Binance, hyper-liquited, demonstrated that there is actual value to these tokens, right?
18:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And how that accrues the pens, some is buying burn, others are whatever dividends, et cetera, right?
18:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Or distribution.
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think if we're really thinking about long-term, and not just the shortcut, short-term speculative demand,
19:02
[SPEAKER_01]: then just focusing on actual tokens that you can clearly track like the revenue and usage and fees.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're generally safe find those tokens.
19:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you have like a two, three, four year horizon.
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that makes a ton of sense.
19:17
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the other big winners this cycle has been production markets.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not sure if, you know, Polymark, it's going to come out with a coin or if cows will come out with a coin, they've got equity holders, right?
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm curious from your strategies, if and how you do hedge positions or or speculate longer short on the market's through prediction markets, is that something you guys facilitate?
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We haven't directly traded production.
19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We have started to ingest a lot of that data, right?
19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you have these up-down contracts, five minutes, 15 minutes, hourly, etc.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are just basically binary options, right?
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you can just trade those British markets and arbitrage against actual crypto native options, or using like a linear purpose, right?
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's definitely a lot of overlap there.
20:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I think like a broader piece is like, if you are a fundamental lead driven hedge fund, that's like, um, and this actually was public.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was like, Arca and Galaxie maybe printed the trades at every
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a lot of exposure to tokens that benefit if the Clary Act gets passed, right?
20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you know these tokens are going to benefit, we'll get hurt if it doesn't get passed.
20:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you can hedge that portfolio and exposure with, you know, the Polymarket.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Clarity act like prediction market basic.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I think right now it's trying to about 40% right like 40% yes, basically, and so, you know, if you know there's been a lot of downsizing your home to portfolio well, you should buy and hedge like saying that Clarity act won't pass and it doesn't pass.
20:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You're at least you know, had your portfolio in that regard.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's fascinating.
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that you know,
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's starting to come into the mainstream now because my dad's asking me about prediction markets, which is like, you know, he'll always kind of ask me towards the end of a cycle.
20:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, what do you think about AI?
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, great.
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Now AI is popping.
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about crypto?
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Crypto is popping?
21:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So you just started asking about prediction markets.
21:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe the wind might come out of the sales a little bit there.
21:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But I kind of wanted to round out the discussion on the venture side.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, what do you look for in a team or a project that
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike, so say, hey, I'm going to put my personal money behind this.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's your history and adventure kind of looked like when you basically said, yes or no?
21:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think, you know, I would say two to three different dimensions, right?
21:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Like often times and this is something I learned before I got into crypto.
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: post-mark trading, trackfireworld.
21:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I just started off in tech company, co-founder, took it through Wacominated, or it's a learn-like lesson there, and at least like how they approach like investing, right?
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, it's changed tremendously, you know, back then.
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: our batches will waste ball and what it used to be, right?
21:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think like, one thing that's like, I was just, you know, when you're investing pre-seed or seed, it's really not necessarily about like the product, right?
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: In some ways, you kind of take the philosophy that like, you're looking for trends, and generally the saying is like, a rising tide lifts all boats, right?
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, as long as you're kind of investing in the right trend and right sector, you don't have to always invest in like the best team, what best product necessarily, right?
22:24
[SPEAKER_01]: at least like copying up team probably will be able to at least e-cout you know some games right and like in so long as you get it right or probably marketing college here right like I did not say happy missing the best um two's often like I think it just comes down to like perseverance um and the team right like
22:41
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many like Airbnb history, you know, Brian Chesky, like they love to talk about, like, YCL, at least, love to talk that story, right?
22:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They initial idea of Airbnb was like, terrible.
22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It was Brigade, it was Stiffard.
22:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, through shared life, Professor Werner, his pivoting and testing and etc, like knowing our customer.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, also really like they see it there, right?
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like there's so many examples of that through any vertical where the initial ideal and like theory was wrong, right?
23:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but at some point through just, you know, the ability to iterate, um, they chief like so I think a lot of it goes into not necessarily just like
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: the actual idea is like, yes, that's important.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, are they on the right path?
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But as on the right path, then it becomes more about judging the team and the character.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's incredible.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Last question is, what's the next trend?
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Is all the trends already existing, right?
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: AI, crypto, that kind of stuff.
23:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is there something that you're personally investing in that maybe a lot of us haven't heard about yet?
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think.
23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing a lot of work into, I'm not having made my judgeman in terms of whether there's actually
23:47
[SPEAKER_01]: very liquid marker, and I hope it does.
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically a compute trading, right?
23:51
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're sure, you know, it has been a lot of work that I think like Brett with the architect, either just launched or we have to launch like birth shortly.
24:01
[SPEAKER_01]: This fueler markers are launching with it, so I think CME and others have announced the intentions to market incredible.
24:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a difficult market, right?
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But if it does take off, I think it could be you're completely new asset class, right?
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a trader, like that's what we want to see is new asset class is a lot of dislocations, no prior history.
24:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The quant sensor, it can't just like step in day one and just like arbiter everything out, right?
24:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's something to keep an eye on.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I don't mean to head fake you and say that was the last question and hit you with another follow up, but it's a super fascinating topic and I don't think a lot of our listeners really know about compute trading and, you know, I think everybody knows like, you know, oh, in order to query clawed I see it says, okay, it's used a hundred tokens that's a thousand tokens and is that what you're saying like speculating on the price.
24:51
[SPEAKER_01]: per query or or what is this more or more I would say like on the institutional front right it's a like different institutions uh... will require like different i guess amount of um... larger or not like individual like me like an amazon yeah like they would need to be really the heads of exposure and businesses to how much like spend they are in terms of machinery and so uh... and so just like a farmer needs to head just across like in some ways um...
25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe electricity futures back in a day or like those appear at the time where Bitcoin miners wanted to trade cash rates for example.
25:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Is they have a direct exposure to hash rate and they wanted to have a market to hedge like their hash rate, right?
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Fascinating.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, that number developed.
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, community markets are more successful than hash rate markets, right?
25:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe not, but that's kind of like the analogy.
25:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Shalang, this was awesome.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been a very generous with your time and enjoy the rest of the summit.
25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope everybody at home watching and enjoyed this conversation.
25:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Shalang Dang, managing partner and founder of monarch asset management.
25:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Where could people kind of follow along on your journey?
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you big on LinkedIn, X?
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you can find me on a hacks.
25:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's literally just flinting.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always in the one and only.
26:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
26:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Check out our website, monitor our dash AM.com, so thank you.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, Lange.
26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody, how I'm watching, hope you enjoyed.
26:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you back with some more great guests.
26:11
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, thank you.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care.